Alexander McQueen
Lee Alexander McQueen was a British fashion designer and couturier. He founded his own Alexander McQueen label in 1992 and was chief designer at Givenchy from 1996 to 2001. His achievements in fashion earned him four British Designer of the Year awards, as well as the Council of Fashion Designers of America International Designer of the Year award in 2003. McQueen died by suicide in 2010 at the age of 40, at his home in Mayfair, London, shortly after the death of his mother.
McQueen had a background in tailoring before he studied fashion and embarked on a career as a designer. His MA graduation collection caught the attention of the fashion editor Isabella Blow, who became his patron. McQueen's early designs, particularly the radically low-cut "bumster" trousers, gained him recognition as an enfant terrible in British fashion. In 2000, McQueen sold 51% of his company to the Gucci Group, which established boutiques for his label worldwide and expanded its product range. During his career, he designed a total of 36 collections for his brand, including his graduation collection and an unfinished final collection. Following his death, his longtime collaborator Sarah Burton took over as creative director of his label.
As a designer, McQueen was known for sharp tailoring, historicism, and imaginative designs that often verged into the controversial. He explored themes such as romanticism, sexuality, and death, and many collections had autobiographical elements. Among his best-known individual designs are the bumsters, the skull scarf, and the armadillo shoes. McQueen's catwalk shows were noted for their drama and theatricality, and they often ended with elements of performance art, such as a model being spray painted by robots, or a life-size illusion of Kate Moss.
McQueen's legacy in fashion and culture is extensive. His designs were showcased in two retrospective exhibitions: Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty and Lee Alexander McQueen: Mind, Mythos, Muse. He remains the subject of journalistic and academic analysis, including the book Gods and Kings by fashion journalist Dana Thomas and the documentary film McQueen.
Early life
Lee Alexander McQueen was born on 17 March 1969 at University Hospital Lewisham in Lewisham, London, to Ronald and Joyce McQueen, the youngest of six children. His Scottish father worked as a taxi driver, and his mother was a social science teacher. It was reported that he grew up in a council flat, but, in fact, the McQueens moved to a terraced house in Stratford in his first year. McQueen attended Carpenters Road Primary School, before going to Rokeby School.He was interested in clothes from a young age. As the youngest of six children, McQueen began experimenting with fashion by making dresses for his three sisters. His earliest fashion memory reaches back to when he was just three years old, drawing a dress on the wall of his East London family home. He was also fascinated by birds and was a member of the Young Ornithologists' Club; later, in his professional career, he often used birds as motifs in his designs.
Career
Early years
McQueen left school aged 16 in 1985 with only one O-level in art and took a course in tailoring at Newham College. He went on to serve a two-year apprenticeship in coat-making with Savile Row tailors Anderson & Sheppard before joining Gieves & Hawkes as a pattern cutter for a short time. The skills he learned as an apprentice on Savile Row helped earn him a reputation in the fashion world as an expert in creating an impeccably tailored look. McQueen later claimed that he had sewed obscenities into the lining of suits made for Prince Charles, although a recall of suits made by Anderson & Sheppard to verify this claim found no evidence of this.After Savile Row, he worked briefly for the theatrical costumiers Angels and Bermans, making costumes for shows such as Les Misérables. In 1989, at the age of 20, he was hired by experimental Mayfair-based designer Koji Tatsuno. He first worked as a pattern cutter before moving into clothing production. Shortly after, he moved to fashion label Red or Dead, working under designer John McKitterick; here he gained experience with fetishwear. When McKitterick left Red or Dead in early 1990 to launch his own label, he hired McQueen. By this time, McQueen was interested in becoming a designer himself, and McKitterick recommended he try for an apprenticeship in Italy, then the centre of the fashion world.
In spring 1990, McQueen left for Milan, Italy. He had no standing job offer, but secured a position with Romeo Gigli on the basis of his portfolio and tailoring experience. He resigned from Gigli's studio in July 1990, and had returned to London – and McKitterick's label – by August that year.
Central Saint Martins
McQueen was still hungry to learn more about designing clothes, so McKitterick suggested he see Bobby Hillson, the Head of the MA course in fashion at London art school Central Saint Martins. McQueen turned up at CSM with a pile of sample clothing and no appointment, seeking a job teaching pattern cutting. Hillson considered him too young for this, but based on the strength of his portfolio, and despite his lack of formal qualifications, accepted McQueen into the 18-month master's-level fashion design course. Unable to afford the tuition, he borrowed £4,000 from his aunt Renee to cover it.McQueen started at CSM in October 1990. He met a number of his future collaborators there, including Simon Ungless, a friend and later room-mate, and Fleet Bigwood, a print tutor at the school. McQueen received his master's degree in fashion design after presenting his graduation collection at London Fashion Week in March 1992. The collection, titled Jack the Ripper Stalks His Victims, was bought in its entirety by magazine editor Isabella Blow. Through the early days of McQueen's career, Isabella Blow helped pave the way using her unique style and contacts to help McQueen. She was in many ways his mentor, which grew into a close friendship.
Blow was said to have persuaded McQueen to use his middle name Alexander when he subsequently launched his fashion career. Another suggestion was that he used his middle name so as not to lose his unemployment benefits for which he was registered while still a struggling young designer under the name of Lee McQueen. McQueen had said that he refused to be photographed in his early career because he did not want to be recognised in the dole office. In the 2018 documentary McQueen, his boyfriend and assistant designer in the early days, Andrew Groves, said that McQueen dictated that they could only show him from behind to avoid being identified and losing his unemployment benefitshis only significant means of income at that time.
Own label
In 1992, McQueen started his own label, and for a time he lived in the cellar of Blow's house in Belgravia while it was under renovation. In 1993, he relocated to Hoxton Square, an area that also housed other new designers including Hussein Chalayan and Pauric Sweeney. His first post-graduation collection, Taxi Driver, was inspired by the 1976 Martin Scorsese film of the same name. It was presented during London Fashion Week in March 1993 on a clothes rack in a small room at the Ritz Hotel. McQueen was one of six young designers sponsored by the British Fashion Council that season. Taxi Driver saw the introduction of the "bumster", an extreme low-rise trouser which McQueen returned to again and again. With this collection, McQueen began his early practice of sewing locks of his own hair in perspex onto the clothes to serve as his label. When the exhibit closed, McQueen packed the items into bin bags and headed out clubbing. He stashed the bags behind one club, started drinking, and promptly forgot about them. When he returned the next day, the entire collection was gone. Nothing remains of the collection.Early runway shows
McQueen's first professional runway show in 1993, the Spring/Summer 1994's Nihilism collection, was held at the Bluebird Garage in Chelsea. His early runway collections developed his reputation for controversy and shock tactics, earning him monikers like enfant terrible and "the hooligan of English fashion". McQueen's Nihilism collection, with some models looking bruised and bloodied in see-through clothes and extremely low-cut bumster trousers, was described by journalist Marion Hume of The Independent as "theatre of cruelty" and "a horror show".McQueen's second runway show was for the Banshee collection. Shortly afterward, McQueen met Katy England, his soon to be "right hand woman", outside a "high profile fashion show" trying to "blag her way in". He asked her to join him as creative director for his following collection, The Birds; she worked with McQueen for many years, serving as his "second opinion". The Birds, which was named after the 1963 Alfred Hitchcock film The Birds and held at Kings Cross, had a roadkill theme featuring clothes with tyre marks and the corsetier Mr Pearl in an 18-inch waist corset.
McQueen's "bumsters" were a common feature of his early shows. Although derided by some and attracting many comments and debate, it spawned a trend in low-rise jeans, especially after Madonna wore a pair in an MTV advert in 1994. Michael Oliveira-Salac, the director of Blow PR and a friend of McQueen's said, "The bumster for me is what defined McQueen."
By 1995, his work positioned him as an artist in the eyes of the public, as he communicated profoundly personal and provocative themes through his collections, a stark contrast to the minimalist aesthetic prevalent at the time.
Mainstream publicity
Although McQueen had found some success with The Birds, it was his controversial sixth collection, Highland Rape, that properly made his name. The collection was inspired by Scottish history, particularly the Highland Clearances of the late 18th and 19th centuries. Styling at the runway show was violent and aggressive: many of the showpieces were slashed or torn, while others were spattered with bleach or fake blood. Reviewers interpreted it as being about women who were raped and criticised what they saw as misogyny and the glamorisation of rape. McQueen denied this, arguing that it referred to "England's rape of Scotland", and was intended to counter other designers' romantic depiction of Scottish culture. As for the charge of misogyny, he said he aimed to empower women and for people to be afraid of the women he dressed. His use of style as a protective barrier has been linked to his experience of witnessing violence against women in his family.McQueen followed Highland Rape with The Hunger and Dante. Dante further raised his international profile, and the collection was shown twice; first in Christ Church, Spitalfields, London, later in a disused synagogue in New York, both attended by large enthusiastic crowds. McQueen won his first British Designer of the Year award in 1996.
File:Coat designed by Alexander McQueen for David Bowie.jpg|thumb|upright=0.7|left|1996 coat designed for David Bowie, used in his Earthling album and tour
McQueen's increasing prominence led to a number of projects for music artists. In 1996, he designed the wardrobe for David Bowie's tour of 1997, such as the Union Jack coat worn by Bowie on the cover of his album Earthling. Icelandic singer Björk sought McQueen's work for the cover of her album Homogenic in 1997. McQueen also directed the music video for her song "Alarm Call" from the same album and later contributed the iconic topless dress to her video for "Pagan Poetry".
McQueen continued to be criticised for misogyny in some of his later shows for designs that some considered degrading to women. In Bellmer ''La Poupée, inspired by Hans Bellmer's The Doll, McQueen placed models including the black model Debra Shaw in metal restraints, which observers interpreted as a reference to slavery, while the silver mouthpiece in Eshu forced the wearer to bare her teeth. Similarly the sex-doll lips make-up of the models in The Horn of Plenty was also criticised as being ugly and misogynistic. The fashion writer of the Daily Mail'' called McQueen "the designer who hates women".